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Australian values, immigration and employment

Isn’t it ironic that we are lectured to about Australian values by a government full of migrants and their immediate descendants.

That is the reality of modern-day Australia.

The 2016 census showed that nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians had either been born overseas (first generation Australian) or one or both parents had been born overseas (second generation Australian).

We are made up of the descendants of the oldest continuous civilisation in the world who arrived tens of thousands of years ago, convicts and soldiers from Great Britain who arrived over 200 years ago, the Afghans, Chinese and Kanakas whose labour helped build the nation during the 1800s, the successive waves of migrants from war-torn countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, skilled migrants seeking a better life, refugees fleeing oppression and, our most numerous migrant cohort, poms and kiwis.

From the 2016 census:

 

Country of Birth (top 5)
1. Australia – 66.7% (15,615,531)
2. England – 3.9% (907,570)
3. New Zealand – 2.2% (518,466)
4. China – 2.2% (509,555)
5. India – 1.9% (455,389)

 

The census also showed, of the 6,163,667 people born overseas, nearly one in five (18 per cent) had arrived since the start of 2012. The majority of those who migrate permanently are skilled workers. Of the 183,608 places granted in 2016-17, 123,567 places were delivered in the Skill stream.

This has advantages for the country in that we gain young skilled workers without having to pay for their education.  It also helps to counter the natural aging of the population.

And whilst I agree that a level of proficiency in the English language is necessary to participate successfully in our society, there are also advantages to becoming more linguistically diverse.

On the flip side, it seems apparent that jobs are going to migrants that could be filled by unemployed Australians.

The government updated the list of skilled visa occupations from July 1, 2017 to, according to Peter Dutton, “reflect genuine skill needs in the labour market”.

Looking through the very long list, it is hard to believe that we can’t find Australian citizens who want to be bricklayers or panel beaters or fitter and turners.

Surely, if there are shortages, we should be training our own teachers and nurses and mechanics and social workers.

In Western Australia, Premier Mark McGowan slashed the number of occupations on the state skilled migration list from 178 to 18.

Among those removed from the list, which fast tracks overseas workers into the state, are various types of engineers, which were in massive demand during the mining boom.

Bricklayers, electricians, refrigeration mechanics, teachers, cafe managers, psychologists and others are also off the list, following widespread consultation, Mr McGowan said.

The only occupations left are medical professionals, including GPs and some specialist doctors and nurses.

One of the problems here is that, whilst we have university places for plenty of doctors, we don’t have sufficient internships and registrar positions for them to complete their qualifications.

Another area that needs urgent attention is aged care. There are no regulations about staff to patient ratio or how the money that the government gives them is spent. Qualified nursing staff are few and far between and are asked to cope with a ridiculous number of residents.

The NDIS is also going to dramatically increase the need for workers in many areas – transport, cleaners, therapists, respite carers, gardeners, community nurses to name a few.

ACAT also now provides similar packages to help over 65s stay in their homes for longer.

We should be training people and hooking them up with positions in these crucial areas rather than having to import people to fill these urgent and foreseeable gaps.

If, instead of paying middlemen like private Job Search providers and labour hire firms, we reinstated the Commonwealth Employment Service, it could advise the government of areas of need so they could co-ordinate education, skills training and immigration as well as linking people up with jobs.

I have previously suggested some form of government organised travelling workforce that could be transported to temporary jobs like crop-picking or disaster clean-up or wherever they may be needed dependent on their different abilities. But this should be correctly paid employment and should not hinder participants eligibility for unemployment benefits when the temporary work ceases and should only be used in those places where employers cannot find locals to work. It also must be a job that is offered, not an obligation – not everyone can just pack up and go.

My point in all this is that, apart from the few of us whose ancestors walked here, we are all very recent arrivals. We do amazingly well in this melting pot made up of people from all over the world.

I do understand that some people are struggling economically and scared about insecure or non-existent employment. There are ways we can do better at addressing that. I don’t have answers but I do have ideas. I am sure we all do. But hating on each other is sure as hell not going to make things better.

As for Australian values, they are no different to any decent person’s values – respect, integrity, honesty, tolerance, kindness, and help for those who may need it.

We can work constructively together to find solutions to our problems. Don’t let politicians exploit our differences for their own political gain.

Particularly this one.

 

But red-headed racists are welcome. Please explain?

 

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18 comments

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  1. Andreas

    Dear Kaye, I agree with your points, except the one where you would bring back the CES. You must realise that under the neocon yoke we have to endure presently, this is a pipe dream. The sell-off corruption mania will not allow this, although common
    sense would agree with you. Take care.

  2. Ricardo29

    I agree with bringing back the CES, or its equivalent, privatisation of the job seeking industry has been pretty much an abject failure, subject to systematic rooting and making some people, including the wife of a former PM very wealthy. I would suggest successes would be vastly outweighed by revolving door failures. I would like to be proved wrong on this.

  3. Terry2

    As regards a travelling workforce that could be transported to temporary jobs like crop-picking or disaster clean-up or wherever I am reminded of the Green Army which was one of the better ideas this government had but for reasons best known to themselves, they disbanded it.

    I was looking over an area of tree planting carried out by the Green Army in my locality ; probably around 60% of the trees have now died due to lack of ongoing watering and care and now overtaken by weeds.

  4. Kaye Lee

    This article in newmatilda raises some serious questions about the consequences of Abbott’s interference in the employment services industry.

    Unlike the funding model of the previous JSA system that prioritised service delivery over outcomes, jobactive flipped it around and tied 60 per percent of total funds to outcomes.

    The effect of these changes on unemployed workers has been catastrophic. Due to the outcome-driven focus of the current contracts, job agencies began to cynically utilise their penalising powers to bully unemployed workers into unfair activities and appointments. There is little doubt that this was a deliberate policy intention of the jobactive system – why else would the Coalition have given job agencies unprecedented new powers to financially penalise unemployed workers?

    Since the introduction of the new system, the number of penalties imposed by job agencies on unemployed workers increased by more than half – the biggest increase in penalties ever recorded.

    Of the 261,529 financial penalties imposed on unemployed workers last year, 56 per cent were inflicted on Community Development Program (CDP) participants – an all-year-round Work for the Dole program targeted specially at Indigenous areas.

    As more unemployed workers than ever before are being forced into Work for the Dole programs under threat of penalties, the number of injuries occurring at government-approved Work for the Dole programs has skyrocketed.

    Unemployed Worker’s Union Report Reveals Shocking Job Network Failures

  5. Andrew Smith

    I’d be very careful about supposed labour market, immigration and economic solutions, when the arguments against (undefined) ‘immigration’ and skilled migration are based on old WASP conservative tropes and nativism; meanwhile wages and conditions are set by Australians not immigrants. Of course there needs to be review of state migration occupation lists for current validity and reliability, in addition to national SOL etc.; the issue in Australia like others is the deflection and obsession through media e.g. population growth, house prices, Chinese buying country up etc. are always overstated while ignoring or disappearing other emergent issues.

    The old nativist tropes include ‘national socialism’ balanced or economic equilibrium, ‘limits to growth’, labour planning where students would be autocratically directed through education, training and where to work (what if they don’t want to?) to avoid the need for immigrants, while ignoring the changing long term demographics exemplified by proportional decline in native workforce due to ageing, and increasing numbers of retirees now due to the baby boomer bubble (started 2010), needing long term support before the big ‘die off’ (starting within 10 years).

    Facts are, labour market and immigration relationships are political, dynamic, complicated and often local, but the non solutions offered are generic top down or autocratic, viewing workers (local or immigrant) as ‘units of production’ and assume fixed variable limits or lines in the sand according to old economic principles of Malthus (population), Ricardo (physical resources), Smith (self interest) and cough cough, Galton (eugenics applied to the lower orders and other types).

    However, the old trope that ‘workers are taking our jobs’ is an old nativist business trope to stir up angst between ‘white workers’ and immigrants (in Oz in past, vs. ‘Catholics’ and ‘Jews’ and ‘Aboriginals’), yet has never been true according to social research; immigration in fact adds some economic value but the social value is immeasurable e.g doing jobs in regional aged care supporting old Australians (often not seen in the cities) through to highly specialised.

    Too many people in Oz of culturally specific left and right have fallen for the nativist tropes used to split the centre left and indirectly support nativist policies for the top 1% direct from the USA, same crowd influencing Trump and Brexit. The quasi ‘academic’ fulcrum of the white nativist movement is based in the US mid west, John Tanton’s Social Contract Press (TSCP), he was a mucker of Paul Ehrlich (population Bomb) and Paul Watson (Sea Shepherd).

    Tanton was an admirer of the white Oz policy, has visited and helped inform Sustainable Australia, while his TSCP and network of astroturfing groups constantly highlight poor ‘white male workers’ vs immigration… see here for a taster, and you should recognise how many of these themes have entered and been encouraged by the MSM as fact http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_27_1/index.shtml

    However, locally Solidarity Australia had good article based on research not consensus ‘Immigration is not to blame for cuts to jobs and wages’:

    ‘The suggestion that bringing 457 visa workers from overseas is coming at the expense of “local jobs” reinforces the myth that immigration causes unemployment and drives down wages.

    In fact evidence from Australia and internationally shows that immigration actually creates jobs. In his book, Immigration and the Australian Economy, William Foster’s surveys over 200 studies on immigration and wages. He found there was, “a marginally favourable effect on the aggregate unemployment rate, even in recession”.’

    Immigration is not to blame for cuts to jobs and wages

  6. June M Bullivant OAM

    Josh Frydenberg, has in his hands a document that could save a unique convict built site The Parramatta Female Factory, for Australia and Tourism. (Does he care, would he care) he has not gained an affiliation for Australia and our values, this article is not only true but it is being demonstrated all over NSW that Josh and the LNP governments do not care. It is not only unbelievable that they are ruling us but what is upsetting they are ruining any chance of Australia attracting Tourism now and in the future. The Federal Government as is the NSW Government has a policy of slash and burn. I am talking about the plans to “Modernise” our Cities. Is this happening in all cities of Australia, or just NSW under Gladys Berejiklian. This is what is happening to Parramatta and also to Sydney, find my comment on Sydney, on the link below, but it applies to most of NSW https://www.facebook.com/Save-Parramatta-Female-Factory-324446394388274/ scroll down view the video, and please share it, and see what they are doing to our heritage, and also Thompson Square. All we will have left of Australia is beach and sand, and even Australian Tourists prefer to holiday with the bombing in Bali. Shame Gladys Berejiklian and Lucy Turnbull for reigning over such destruction of our tourism potential. See the Windsor Bridge. https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=cawb%20-%20save%20windsor%20from%20the%20rta

  7. James

    I’d just like to leave Australia, I have no pride in this country anymore and I so pity it’s people. My family have been here since the early 1800’s and I never thought id see the day this happened, politicians in this country are a vile, disgusting joke, all of them

  8. Will

    I couldn’t agree more with James, I have thought about leaving. Australia’s political class don’t seem too bright. Liberal labour greens nats one nation. Who do you vote for when the options are a giant douche or a shit sandwich? I can’t believe Donald Trump got in. I can’t believe Australia managed to put that mad man Abbott in the top job. The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute chat with the average voter(Winston Churchill). I starting to understand why.

  9. jim

    …………..All credit to Michael Griffin ( Flinders Uni ) for this excellent work on the unhealthy welfare card……………

    THE LIBERAL’S WELFARE CARD: CORRUPTION DISGUISED AS PHILANTHROPY!
    (REVISED)

    The Liberal National Party (‘LNP’) welfare card program is really a LNP rort for the benefit of the Liberal and National Parties and their members, donors and supporters. Indue Pty. Ltd, the corporation awarded the contract to manage the welfare card program and to operate its underlying systems, is a corporation owned by Liberal and National Party members and that donates to the Liberal and National Parties. The Former Chairman of Indue is none other than former LNP MP Larry Anthony who is the son of former Liberal Country Party Deputy Prime Minister Doug Anthony.

    Other companies now owned by Larry Anthony, or by the corporate trustee of his family trust, Illalangi Pty Ltd, work under ‘sub’ contracts for Indue itself and make their profits from dealings with Indue in the course of Indue performing its contracts with the Government.

    These corporations are SAS Consulting Group Pty Ltd – a political lobbying group that counts Indue as a client – and Unidap Solutions Pty Ltd – an electronic digital IT services corporation that provides Indue, and the current LNP Government directly, with various IT services.

    This network of corporations and trusts is standard practice for those wishing to conceal their involvement in an enterprise or operation and is often engaged to shield a person’s involvement in an enterprise.

    This is the real purpose of the LNP determination to adopt and expand the welfare card program, that is, to obtain donations for the financially stressed LNP. The Liberals had significant amounts withheld from them by various Australian electoral commissions in 2016 due to their failure to properly report the political donations they received. The Liberals have shown a propensity to manipulate electoral donation laws as their recent dealings with the various electoral commissions in ‘the ‘Sinodinos Affair’ and Joe Hockey’s ‘North Sydney Forum Affair’ indicate.

    Likewise previous Liberal scandals involving tax payers money being used to attract donations to the Liberal Party include Turnbull’s $10 million tax payer funded grant for donation in the Rainmaker deal with a member of his own Wentworth Forum and John Howard’s and Julie Bishop’s involvement with the Austrade grant and donations deal in the Firepower affair. More recently we have seen the Liberals embroiled in electoral allowance scams which evinces a flagrant disregard for proper management of and accountability for public financial resources under their stewardship.

    Moreover, it is common knowledge that the Liberals also need to repay their current parliamentary leader, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the $1.8 million he loaned to them for the 2016 election campaign – not to mention other loan amounts he has advanced to them in the past. It is reported that the Liberal Party is in debt to the tune of approximately $39 million.
    Consider these facts.

    The welfare card program does not produce savings for the government but adds another level of administrative bureaucracy and cost on top of the welfare payments system.

    In fact, the new look Welfare Card, which is a revamp of the former Basics Card, costs upwards of $4,000 person to implement and manage and the previous Basics Card cost $6000 per person. That is, for every person compelled to use the card the Government will also pay Indue upward of $4,000 each. That’s $4,000 that could have been spent on that person directly or as a contribution toward the provision of services to communities with health, educational and employment needs or on reducing the alleged government debt. If every person receiving unemployment benefits were placed on the welfare card the cost to the tax payer of the administration of the card alone, not including the actual welfare payments made, would be approximately $3.2 billion more than the cost of the current payment system.

    That money will be paid to Indue, or to any other private card provider or crony of the LNP Government that it wants to lavish with public funds, but not to those in need. That is $3.2 billion that could have been used to reduce the budget deficit or spent on health, education and work programs for all Australians.

    If the recipients of other types of benefits, such as pensioners and family tax benefit recipients, are also compelled to participate in the card program then the cost to the taxpayer and Government coffers would be billions more again. Remember, this is an additional cost on top of the welfare payments that need to be made to recipients and that these additional administrative amounts per person are paid to Indue as the manager and operator of the card system and not as income support or on services for those that need it.

    While incurring these additional costs, the card program does not displace any existing welfare costs to the Government or taxpayers because Centrelink and the Department of Human Services staff, who are responsible for welfare payments, were retrenched en mass years before the Welfare Card was introduced. Despite having this reduced staff, the Department still managed to maintain welfare services and payments without the need for intervention by a private operator such as Indue.

    On that basis, the card program is more costly than the system it is intended to supersede and replace as it requires the Government to pay high per person administration fees to the private operator Indue without displacing any existing costs sustained by the Government. Rather than reducing the alleged budgetary deficit, the card program worsens the budget deficit and creates no savings for the government at all.

    With this in mind, it is now clear that the true purpose of the $4.5 billion amount that the LNP Centrelink ‘Robo-Debt’ claw back campaign is targeted to recover from welfare recipients is the cost of implementing the welfare card across the whole country to recipients of welfare of all forms and not just to the unemployed. This claw-back would enable the Department of Human Services to balance its departmental budget by offsetting the outgoing administrative costs of the welfare card by reducing payments in other areas. These administrative costs are funds from the Department of Human Services and welfare budget that were obtained from Government coffers for the purpose of providing income support to the people who need it and not for the purpose of passing those public funds on to private corporations closely connected to the LNP as profits and fees.

    Under the LNP, Government contracts are now being awarded on a ‘limited tender basis’ at a frequency greater than they have ever been in history. This enables the LNP to award Government contracts to their crony mates on ‘commercial in confidence’ terms, and, thus, with an immunity from freedom of information laws, who then donate some of the profits earned from those Government contracts back to the LNP as tax deductible donations. The latest Government contract to Indue was with the Department of Human Service for $850,000 worth of ‘benefit cards’ over the whole of 2017. This is an amount of money to produce cards for all unemployment benefit recipients with some left over.

    The latest contract between Department of Human Services and Indue was awarded on a ‘limited tender basis’ sometime before 1 January 2017, that is, before the trials for the card had concluded and been assessed. In fact, it was awarded without any tendering at all. Larry Anthony continues to benefit from the Government contracts with Indue as he shares in the profits earned by other companies that he has interests in, SAS and UniDap, by way of their dealings with Indue.

    The contract for the issuing and management of the card was awarded before the trials for the card program’s operation were completed and before the merits and outcomes of the card program were assessed. Hence, if the real objects and purposes of the welfare card program were positive health and social outcomes as claimed, then the trials would necessarily need to have been completed and their health and social outcomes assessed before the recent contracts to Indue could be awarded.

    This is not what occurred. Rather, the contracts were awarded to Indue before the trials had even been completed, let alone before their outcomes were assessed. It is open to conclude from this that the Government contracts were going to be awarded to Indue regardless of whether the purported health and social outcomes and objectives of the card program were achieved. This indicates that the positive health and social outcomes stated for the card program are not, and could never have been, the actual purpose of the card program nor the reasons why a Ministerial decision was made to award more contracts to Indue.

    There is no evidence that the health and social outcomes claimed for the welfare card have been achieved. Despite touting cherry picked colloquial ‘evidence’ about declines in poker machine use and alcohol sales in areas where the card program has been tested, reports of increases in other serious crimes in those areas, where robberies and assaults have increased by up to 200%, have been ignored and gone unreported as desperate people have sought the cash or valuables, such as jewelry and electrical goods, they need to make necessary purchases or that can be traded for cash.
    In the light of the considerations raised above, the question is then, ‘what is the real purpose of the welfare card program?’ There can be little doubt that the answer to this is the provision of donations to the LNP. In effect, LNP members and supporters are obtaining benefits from government funds that are intended for the welfare of Australian citizens. Public money is being transferred to private individuals and corporations with deep connections with the LNP in exchange for no apparent benefit to the public and in exchange for donations to the LNP. Unfortunately, with this very weak democracy we have in Australia, there is no way to hold those involved in this scheme to account or to have any corruption investigated independently or prosecuted at a federal level. No federal ICAC exists. Only the Federal Police can investigate corruption as the criminal offence of defrauding the Commonwealth.

    Given that the Federal Police are controlled by the LNP Government and given the LNP is the very party that is benefiting from the card program, and given that the Federal Police are beholding to that LNP far right for their funding, any such investigation by the Federal Police is unlikely to ever occur.
    However, it may be possible to challenge the award of the contract to Indue on grounds of ‘unreasonableness’ and perhaps ‘bias’ under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (Cth).

    The decision to award of the contract to Indue was ‘unreasonable’ on the basis that the trials were not completed or their outcomes assessed before the contract was awarded to Indue. This means that the decision to award the contracts at the time they were awarded had no factual basis or evidence to support the alleged purpose for the card program and reason for the contracts – as no reason existed or relevant facts were known at the time the decision to award the contract to Indue was made.

    On that basis, the Minister’s decision to award the contracts to Indue was unreasonable at the time the Minister made it and that decision should be reversed. The decision was ‘bias’ because no open tender was used to award the contracts and because Indue is a donor of the Liberal Party and its members are LNP members or supporters. Hence, when awarding the contracts for the issue, implementation and management of the welfare card program, the Ministerial decision-maker preferred Indue to other possible suppliers due to the association of Indue with the LNP, that is, the political party in which the Minister for Human Services, Allan Tudge, who made the decision to award the contract to Indue, is also, necessarily, a member.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-13/robbery-and-assault-spike-not-more-crime-commissioner/9047498

  10. jimhaz

    Thanks for the article Kaye. Articles I like here seem to becoming rarer – too far left for me, but this article is moderate.

    I hope unions are working on another ALP Premier, Daniel Andrews to cut the list for that state as well. Vic removed 5 only and cut the maximum age to 45.

    In the end obtaining enough people to meet our jobs requirements comes down to basic economics.

    Where there is an insufficient supply then wages must rise to attract people into these shortfall areas. Yes, this will result in wage inflation thus cost consumers but it will result in a better society over the long term (more caring, less dog eat dog, more relaxed, less aggressiveness). Wage inflation at the low end is now essential in any case so that people can afford housing. The upper middle/upper wage class has already had its wage rises due to the rich getting richer and thus having more disposable income for the high end services they require and it is only fair that their wages become more static. This class (including its equivalent OS investor) has been driving housing inflation from the top down.

    Yes, Yes, Yes – the billions wasted on Job Provider programs would be so much better off spent in education to jobs programs in the Trade and Carer categories (including Child care). Seeing as jobs in manufacturing will continue to decline we must use these sort of jobs for those who see little career prospects in the future as they are not suited to the sort of work large service corporations want.

    [Another area that needs urgent attention is aged care]

    Unfortunately the Aged Care industry would appear to be price gouging mode. The government needs increase the supply of not for profit gov owned centres and exclude corporate entities from managing them, so there is a lot more competition. This way wages could be increased instead of profits and the corporate owned centres would have to adjust to lower profit margins.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/nursing-home-profits-soar-as-patient-care-declines-20151224-glupug.html
    “The profits of aged care homes surged 40 per cent in the past year as operators cut hours of nursing care while claiming higher payments from the federal government for servicing more of the most frail patients”

    Unfortunately we have a government that does not work for the community, but clearly wants to promote profit opportunities – this is because the lobbyists mentality has completely taken the humanity out of governing. Sure the ALP are better than the LNP, but not by as much as one thinks – where the public is not aware of the impact business lobbying/infiltration is having on policy they will go with what business wants.

    God I want to go back to the 80’s before the US became a plutocracy making us follow suit. I want the sort of easy socialism we had then to return.

  11. graphite

    “It (immigration) also helps to counter the natural aging of the population”

    No. Mass immigration doesn’t counter the ageing of the population at all. Unless our migrants are Peter Pan and Wendy, they age at the same rate as the rest of us.

    The only way that immigration could affect the Australian population profile is if we had progressively bigger intakes, year on year – forever. Kind of like a Ponzi scheme..

    What mass immigration DOES deliver is a bigger population overall. The social and environmental costs of this are enormous and far outweigh any alleged benefit associated with ‘economic growth’.

    The uselessness of mass immigration as a tool for managing population ageing is best captured in a 2016 report by demographer Peter McDonald entitled ‘Migration as a Demographic Process and its Effects on Population Growth and Age Composition’.

    Table 1 from the report shows conclusively that even with low fertility rates of around 1.3 children per female, the proportion of people aged 65+ is only reduced by about 10% over a hundred years through mass immigration. Big deal. In a more realistic scenario where fertility rates are around 2.08 per female, 200,000 new migrants a year makes an even smaller difference to the age profile (less than 3%) over the period.

    Importantly, this modelling also shows that the single best measure for keeping our age profile younger is through a higher native birth rate. With a fertility rate of 3 children per female and zero net migration, the percentage of the population aged over 65 is expected to be 14.1% – almost exactly what it was in 2013. Additionally, this scenario keeps the overall population to a manageable 26 million. It offers the best of all worlds.

    This is an important point for those concerned with achieving a stable, sustainable population for Australia. Lower fertility rates will certainly deliver a smaller population, but even with ongoing net overseas migration of 200,000 per annum for 100 years, the proportion of people aged 65+ will almost double to over 25%. The only way to achieve a stable population AND a proportion of over 65’s similar to today is to cut net overseas migration significantly and encourage a higher native birth rate.

  12. paul walter

    Interesting comment from jim.. seems to fit the pattern.

  13. paul walter

    BTW, mods, that is a really STUPID donate facility. Why can’t sites employ gizmos that are rational?

  14. Michael Taylor

    Because we can’t afford it, Paul. Simple.

    I wish we could.

  15. paul walter

    whoops!..donation by pigeon on the way!

  16. Andrew Smith

    @graphite

    ‘No. Mass immigration doesn’t counter the ageing of the population at all. Unless our migrants are Peter Pan and Wendy, they age at the same rate as the rest of us.’

    False, I understand the perception by MSM of high or runaway immigration leading to ‘unsustainable population growth’; it is a popular meme in MSM and politics but ignores the make up or definition of ‘immigration’ and is presented by experts e.g. Australia’s ‘best demographer’ according to Bob Carr, is Dr. ‘I’m not against immigrants but..’, enough antipathy to satisfy anyone’s nativist instincts?

    The permanent migration program of 200k is a lower proportion of population versus past immigration, and in fact significant numbers e.g. 15-20% have been counted into the estimated population via the NOM i.e. being onshore already (and like everywhere low fertility rates).

    Most of what we observe in headline data reflects now significant churn over of temporary residents caught up in the nebulous NOM (conflation of temps with permanents, inflating headline number and weaponising NOM post 2006), without right of permanent residency or migration; yet are demonised as ‘immigrants’? Meanwhile significant population growth is emerging via ageing citizens, not due to immigrants.

    Accordingly, not only are international students, second year back packers and 457s falsely described as ‘immigrants’ and perceived as permanent, they are in fact temporary net budget contributors who subsidise increasing numbers of Oz citizens already in, or transitioning into, retirement and dependent upon the state, without breaking budgets or increasing taxes on working age or youth.

    I think the appalling misrepresentation and conflating of immigration, NOM and population data in the Anglosphere is a great example of PR or astro turfing of the old WASP ‘oilgarchs’, ownership of the UN Population Council and eugenics described as ‘sustainability’; supporting the top 1% while blaming the lower orders of workers and immigrants for any real or perceived national ills.

    Last wank of the ‘skipocracy’, while some Liberals are asking for a Howard return to Bennelong…….. guarantee that our electorate would create a gerontocracy, if we haven’t already.

    Meanwhile, relax, the big die off is coming 🙂

  17. Charlie VanDerKat

    Hi Jim,
    your facts about Indue are almost entirely wrong. Indue is not a Pty Ltd, it’s Indue Ltd. This means it’s a Public Company and you can inspect its share register just by asking. If you did, you would find that it’s not owned y the Liberal Party or National Party but is owned by not for profit Credit Unions. This information is available on its web site. If you just went there to check, you would know this. Its ownership is transparent, and your claims of profits going to the LNP are false.

    You are also wrong about Doug Anthony. He was a director and was Deputy Chairman. He retired as a director a few years ago. The current Chairman and Director is Dawson Petie, who was General Secretary of the Queensland ACTU. So he’s obviously a LNP stooge.

    The major cost of the Cashless Debit Card is setting up a new, customised, standalone VISA card processing system. This is what cost several million dollars. Any bank or VISA issuer will charge at least this much. Any of the big Australian banks will not do this for less than $5 million, sometimes up to $10 million. But this is what the Department requested. Their customisation requests resulted in a more expensive system than a standard ViSA card.

    Each additional card holder costs only a little more, as the major cost is the capital associated with the initial setup. But go on perpetuating the myth that the cost per card holder is in the thousands. It isn’t.

    I understand none of the big banks were interested in building the system, and there are very few companies capable of building a custom visa processing system in Australia. So its not surprising that Indue got the job.

    I get that you don’t like the Card, but using complete fabrications and innuendos undermines your case. The AIM has published rubbish like this before. You’re just continuing its sloppy journalism.

  18. Michael Taylor

    The AIM has published rubbish like this before. You’re just continuing its sloppy journalism.

    Jim made a comment, as he is entitled to. It’s a bit harsh to blame the site just because you don’t like the comment.

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